The Hipster Hen Ranch sits on nine acres near the St. Croix
River, a pristine, protected river that forms a long section of the border between Minnesota and
Wisconsin. The house, other buildings, gardens, and chicken runs take up maybe an acre, and the rest is pretty much mature oak
forest. One nice thing about living in
the oak woods is the abundance of wildlife.
Last night when Bailey and I took our final trip outside before bed, I listened to two great horned owls having an
extended conversation. We often hear
or catch glimpses of owls, eagles, wild turkeys, hawks, deer, foxes, coyotes, raccoons,
bears and gazillions of squirrels and rabbits.
There have even been occasional reports of cougars and bobcats.

I truly appreciate being able to interact with all these wild critters, but there’s a downside. Most
of my neighbors and I choose to live in the country for the country lifestyle. That usually includes growing big gardens and
raising a few animals. And that’s where
our interaction with the local wild critters can become tricky. Critters can be divided into three
categories: The carnivores, like the
hawks, foxes, and coyotes have a pronounced appreciation for chickens—but not
in the same way that you, my blog readers, appreciate chickens. The herbivores, such as the deer and rabbits,
have an insatiable fondness for my garden and apple trees. And then there are the omnivores, best
represented by the raccoons, who would be happy to have a few tomatoes from the
garden for an appetizer before settling down to a fine chicken entrée.

We all do our best to deal with this problem. In the not-so-distant days past, the solution
was to shoot every critter in sight. When
I was a kid, I learned that the birds I now call hawks were “chicken hawks”, that
they existed to eat our chickens, and when you spotted one, you reached for
your rifle. Fortunately, most folks are
a bit more enlightened now. I realize
that I have chosen to raise my vegetables and chickens in habitat that was
occupied by wild animals long before I arrived.
So I share the space—one acre for me and my domestic plants and animals,
and the other eight acres for the wild animals.
But I prefer not to share my
chickens and tomatoes. To protect my
gardens from plant munchers, I keep them close to the house, spray copious
amounts of repellent, and of course I have a ferocious 16-year-old Labrador Retriever. And to protect the Hipster Hens from chicken
munchers, I don’t ever allow them to free range. When I’m home, they’re strolling around a
half-acre chicken run, and when I’m gone, they’re in the hen pen with its wire
roof, and perimeter of buried wire. And
of course there’s the ferocious 16-year-old Labrador Retriever.

My system to protect against predators does seem to
make a difference. Last summer, a nearby
neighbor lost an entire flock in one night to a weasel attack. A friend who free-ranges her chickens had almost
her entire flock picked off one hen at a time over the course of the summer by
an unknown predator. By the end of the
summer she was down to two war-hardened and apparently very savvy old Barred
Rock hens. On the other hand, I've
never lost a single chicken to predators (I’m knocking hard on my wooden desktop
as I write this). There has been one
hawk attack that all the chickens escaped unscathed (more on that in a later
post), and then there was the July 2015 raccoon incident.

Back in early June of last year, I saw a raccoon hanging
around my backyard on several occasions.
The coon was quite interested in the bird feeder and quickly figured out
how to shimmy up the pole, around the squirrel baffle and to the very top. Then it was a simple matter of sitting on top
and reaching down for one little raccoon handful of birdseed after the other—directly
out of the tray. I wasn’t particularly
happy about the birdseed, but was even more concerned about the chickens. While the chickens were pretty well protected
in the hen pen, it would be an easy thing for a raccoon to scoot up a tree to
get over the eight-foot-high chicken run fence.
The chickens are only in the run during daytime hours when I’m home, but
this raccoon was not a bit shy and had no problem snuffling around the backyard
in the daylight.

Roosters (and some hens!) have spurs – a claw-shaped
projection on their legs just above their feet.
Spurs start out as small bumps on young chickens and gradually grow into
long, curved, sharp weapons. And they are weapons. Roosters use their spurs to defend themselves
and their flocks. When a rooster
attacks, he propels himself forward feet first, intending to slash his opponent
with his spurs. People who engage in
cockfighting (which,
thankfully, is now illegal in all 50 states after Louisiana banned it in 2007),
cover their fighting roosters’ spurs with long metal spikes called gaffs. This guarantees that the spur, which can be
injurious enough in its normal unadorned state, will be even more harmful—thus
increasing the blood, fatalities, and excitement for the spectators of the “sport”. I’m referring to this brutality as sport only
because that’s how it is characterized in the parts of the world where it
remains legal. But I’m getting a bit off track
from the topic I really want to talk about—trimming roosters’ spurs to make
them less dangerous. In addition to removing a weapon, spur
trimming also helps protect hens from being injured while mating with the
rooster. And since spurs can become
amazingly long, shortening them can actually make it easier for the rooster to
walk.

Last week, my wife, Kathy, astutely noticed that one of Emile’s spurs
was so curved it was almost winding back into his leg. Spurs sometimes can actually grow all the way
back into a rooster’s leg, causing pain and lameness. I don’t know how Kathy even noticed Emile’s
spurs since his legs are covered in dandy feather pantaloons all the way down to
his feet, in the usual Cochin style. But
when I got a chance to get a closer look, I saw the curved spur as well and
decided it was time for Emile to get a pedicure, and I further decided that we
would take care of all the guys while we were at it.

If you were to x-ray a chicken spur, you would see that the
tip is solidly made of the same keratin-rich horny material that covers the
entire spur—it’s the same material that is in a chicken’s toenail and it’s dead—there
are no nerve endings or blood supply. Starting
about half-way down the spur and going all the way to the leg, there’s an inner
core of living tissue, and inside this core is bone—an extension of the chicken’s
tarsometatarsus. (Watch me toss around the hundred-dollar
words! That’s the official name for the
bone a chicken’s leg shank.) The
presence of an inner core of bone make spurs more analogous to horns than
toenails.

It’s good to have a mental picture of the inside of a spur
when you’re trimming. If you trim too
closely to the leg, you'll cut live tissue and could even cut into bone. If you cut in the right place, it’s as simple
and painless as trimming toenails.

Spur trimming is really a two-person job. You need one person to hold the squirming,
frightened rooster, and one person to wield the trimming tool. There are three different methods—each with
its own tool:

One choice is to trim the
spurs with a sharp dog nail clipper. The
operative word here is “sharp.” A dull
clipper can function more like a nutcracker and actually crack the entire outer
layer of the spur—not good! You should trim
about a third of the distance from the end and keep in mind if you trim too much
you’ll be cutting into live tissue. It’s
a good idea to have styptic powder on hand in case you hit live tissue and
cause bleeding.

A second method is to
use a Dremel pet grooming tool—an electric tool with a rotating file at the end
that’s designed for filing dog toenails.
There’s no chance of cracking the spur with a Dremel and you’re probably
less likely to go too deep and cause bleeding since filing is such a gradual
process. The down-side of a Dremel is
that it is gradual. Filing a spur can take some time, and
meanwhile you’re holding this unhappy, frightened rooster. And then, a Dremel is a bit pricier than even
the best clipper.

Another technique is
to grab the spur at the base with pliers and gently squeeze the pliers while
wiggling the spur back and forth.
Eventually the entire outer layer of the spur will detach and you can
pull it off, leaving the living core behind.
You will definitely need styptic powder for this procedure—there will be
blood. Many resources that I respect
offer “uncapping” as viable method for trimming spurs, but I can’t get past the
notion that it’s on par with pulling out someone’s fingernails. There’s no denying that desheathed spurs
will bleed and that the rooster will feel pain.

I'm a proponent of the dog-clipper method, and that’s
exactly what we did. It was quick and
painless. The hardest part was managing
to apprehend all three guys!

Kathy was the holder and I was the trimmer. Each rooster in turn got quickly and painlessly trimmed while frantically thinking, "What is HAPPENING TO ME!?"

Emile's nearly ingrown spur

Not only is Paul the smallest of the roosters, but he's also covered in very silly frizzled feathers. So it's so ironic that he has HUGE spurs. Ah, life.....

Last week’s big surprise in the coop was the sight of Marissa
the Cream Legbar pullet hunkered down in a nest box with her jaw set in
determination as she tried to hatch eggs.
“No!” I told myself. “Marissa can’t be broody! Legbars don’t go broody! Pullets don’t go broody!” Nevertheless, she spent an entire day on the
nest, and when she was still nesting the next day, I decided it was time to do
a little research.

Marissa, her jaw set in determination, broods.

First of all, Greenfire Farms, the only U.S. importer of Cream Legbars
states very clearly on their website that Cream Legbar hens “are rarely broody.” So there you go. “Rarely” is not the same as never, but the
odds certainly seem against broodiness in this breed.

So what’s the scoop on broody pullets? This little hen is barely out of her
teens! Doesn’t she understand the risks
of having kids at such a tender age? I
couldn’t find anything from any of the experts I depend on regarding broody
pullets, but when I checked the “Backyard
Chickens” forum, there were several discussions regarding broody
pullets. One flock keeper reported that
one of her buff Orpington pullets started laying eggs at five-months-old and
went broody three weeks later. Of course
Orpingtons do have a reputation for going broody at the drop of a hat. The general impression I got from the
information I sorted through on the forum is that any time a chicken is laying
eggs they can certainly go broody, but that isn’t the usual behavior for
pullets.

Basically, my research confirmed what I already thought I
knew. Pullets rarely go broody. Cream Legbars rarely go broody. Combine those two things into one hen and it
would be extremely unlikely that she
would go broody. So I passed this
information on to Marissa. She responded
by puffing her feathers waaay out and dismissively stating, “Cluck, cluck,
cluck, cluck.” Typical broody hen
behavior. So that’s when I put her in
the broody crate. I only kept her in
there a couple of days. Even toward the
end of the first day she was shaking her head and muttering, “What was I
thinking!?”

Now she’s back with the flock and is a totally reformed
hen. She’s not laying eggs, though, and may
not for a bit, which is too bad since so many of the other hens are not laying
because they’re going through their fall molt.
Was this a sign that this little hen will continue having bouts of
broodiness? That’s something only
Marissa can answer, and in time, I’m sure she will.

One postscript: If you’re new to my
blog or new to chickens and you’re wondering what all this broodiness stuff is
about, I’ve written this post,
and another
one here that will fill you in.

It’s after midnight and I’m pulling into my garage. It’s been a long day with lots of
driving. My sleeping daughter groggily
stirs to wakefulness in the back seat.
She’s been at music camp for most of the week and this was the day that my
wife and I drove there, attended a concert put on by the camp kids, then loaded
our daughter and all of her stuff into the car and headed home. My wife, daughter, and I all get out of the
car and stretch. While my wife helps my
daughter unload her cello from the car, I fumble with my keys as I walk to the
front door. The house is dark—my son is
apparently out for the evening since there’s no way a nineteen-year-old college
student would be in bed at midnight. I
unlock the door and swing it open. The
two dogs run out of the dark house and cavort happily on the lawn. There is something so wrong with this scene
that my wife, my daughter and I stand and stare in gape-jawed disbelief. We
don’t own any dogs. “Are we at the
right house?” I query in disbelief. “Um…do
we have dogs now?” “Are those dogs?” my
daughter asks in confusion.

Yes, they are definitely dogs—two big dogs snuffling around
our yard. They look like labs—one is
black and one is yellow. They are both
wearing collars with weird little boxes on top. I go into the house and find a note from my
son. “Well, there’s not much we can do
about this right now.” I tell my wife and daughter. “These dogs are going to have to spend the
night with us. In the morning we’ll call
Animal Control.”

Meet Darcy
Barred Rock, the fourth hen in the quartet of Barred Rock hens that rule the
Hipster Hen roost. Darcy isn’t super friendly like Arlene, she isn’t super
clever like Barbara, and she isn’t super bossy like Charlie. She is, perhaps,
one of those individuals who would be characterized by all observers as “the
other one”. But I don’t think Darcy cares. I think she knows that she’s SORT OF
friendly and clever—and maybe just a little bit bossy. And other than that
she’s happy to be the hen that goes about her business of laying one of those
nice brown eggs nearly every day!

Meet Emile,
the birchen Cochin rooster. Well, actually, you’ve already met Emile. This is a
recent picture that I like quite a bit that I had to share—Emile in all his
roosterly splendor!

Meet Emily,
the plump and personable black Silkie hen. Emily really does have eyes but
they’re hard to see because they’re sort of hidden in her fluff and they’re
black--just like the rest of her. Emily’s eyes, and the rest of her for that
matter, are hard to photograph. She just sort of absorbs all the light and ends
up looking like a silhouette. I haven’t ever taken a picture that I feel does
her justice, but she’s so darn cute I’m gonna keep trying!

Emily the
Silkie stares contemplatively through the chicken run fence on a nice fall day.

Meet Maran
the cuckoo Marans hen. She’s pictured here with her constant companion, Carmen
Maranda. Maran and Carmen are in their third year—these two girls and Angitou
the golden Polish hen joined the flock as babies in the summer of 2014 and came
from Murray McMurray
Hatchery in Webster City, Iowa. Marans can come in nine different colors,
but Maran and Carmen’s cuckoo color is the most common in the US. In addition
to being pretty birds, my Marans hens lay beautiful dark chocolate brown eggs.

Here's
Carmen Maranda and Maran the cuckoo Marans hens as kids in the summer of 2014,
along with their friend Angitou the golden Polish hen.

Meet Marissa
the Cream Legbar. I captured this picture of Marissa in August—about the time
she started laying eggs. Since then, Marissa has laid a pretty little
blue-green pullet egg almost every day, and each egg is incrementally larger
than the previous one. My older hens have scaled waaay back on egg production
lately, since they’ve started their fall molt. So many days the four eggs I get
from my four young Legbar hens outnumber the eggs I get from the rest of the
flock!

This post is about chicken sweaters. It is also about anxiety. Because sometimes chickens get anxious. But it's mostly about chicken sweaters. But first I need to tell you about Emile the rooster. Back a few years
ago, when Emile was a mere teenage cockerel, he got a bad case of
sour crop.He reached a point where he was
all hunched up in a corner, staring into space and literally near death.Happily, I was able to bring him back to good health and full recovery.He became an
amazingly docile and friendly little rooster after he recovered, maybe because
of all the handling that was necessary when he was sick.But I like to think that perhaps there was
also an element of gratitude involved.

Anyway, over the
last year he’s undergone a huge change in attitude. He makes it clear whenever I go into the coop
that it’s his coop, not mine, and
that he’s in charge not me. There have been a few instances where he’s
taken me on—actually lunged at me feet-first with those long pointed
spurs. This usually happens when he
feels I’m harassing his hens in some way, but sometimes it’s just because I
maybe look at him wrong, or possibly only because he’s in a foul (um, fowl)
mood. Being attacked by an enraged
rooster could be disconcerting if it weren’t for the fact that Emile is a
bantam Cochin roo and the biggest thing about him is his ego.

When he goes on the
attack, I usually respond by putting on a pair of gloves to avoid contact with
those spurs, then I pick him up, pet him, and tell him that he just needs to
think calm thoughts and concentrate on his breathing. This really does seem to calm him, although
for all I know he may just be icily plotting his revenge.

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Whew! I think that pretty much covers it!

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Mission Statement

Hi! I’m Randy and this is my chicken blog. I write it, edit it, take the pictures, feed the chickens, hug the chickens, etc. I blog because a few years ago, I got these chickens…I had no idea when I got my first chickens that I would get attached to them and become this sentimental, crazy old chicken guy. I had no idea that each chicken would have its own personality, that chickens had such a huge range of vocalizations that they literally “talk” to each other, that they have this amazing, intricate social structure, or that there would be so much drama in the coop—love, conflict, friendship, sex, motherhood, anxiety—a virtual soap opera playing out before my eyes every day.

So I write these little vignettes about my birds that are mostly whimsical but also mostly true. In the process of telling my stories I also pass along a variety of views and opinions which are completely my own. Please also bear in mind that the information I share regarding my care of my chickens has come from my experience caring for my flock. I’m not a veterinarian and I have had no formal education in any kind of chickenology.

There are a few facts that I hope to get across to anybody who regularly reads my blog:

1.My chickens are really cool.

2.All chickens are really cool.

3.The majority of chickens being raised for meat or egg production, in spite of their inherent coolness, are treated cruelly. You can help make changes by your purchasing habits. Educate yourself! Read labels! Check company websites!